Serial killer suspect agrees to plead guilty

THE man suspected of being the Green River Killer has agreed to plead guilty next week to the murders of 48 women in a deal that would spare him from execution.

Gary Leon Ridgway, a 54-year-old truck painter arrested in the United States serial killer case in 2001, will admit to murdering 42 women on an investigators’ list of Green River Killer victims, as well as six women not on the list, sources said, who are involved in the case and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The Green River Killer preyed mostly on prostitutes, drug addicts and young runaways and other women on the streets. The case is named after the waterway where the first bodies were found in the suburbs south of Seattle in mid-1982.

Most of the slayings were in the mid-1980s, but one of the women Ridgway is expected to admit killing died in 1990, and another died in 1998.

In many cases, the killer had sex with his victim and then strangled her. Ridgway was arrested nearly two years ago and was ultimately charged with seven slayings.

Prosecutors said DNA evidence and microscopic paint particles linked him to most of those killings.

Ridgway began co-operating with authorities months ago, one source confirmed, leading them to four sets of remains over the summer. With the death penalty off the table, Ridgway would face life in prison without parole.

The women Ridgway will admit killing who were not on the list include Patricia Ann Yellow Robe, 38, of Seattle, a nurse’s aide who was found dead in 1998 and Marta Reeves, 36, whose remains were found in 1990.

“I’m a little stunned, you know,” said Robe’s father, Joe Yellow Robe of Box Elder, Montana, said.

“I find it incredible that an individual was able to cause that many deaths, to perpetrate that much suffering and misery on so many people.”

The body of Reeves, 37, was found near Enumclaw, not far from where three Green River victims were found in 1982.

Back on August 15, 1982, 41-year-old Robert Ainsworth stepped into his rubber raft and began his descent south down the Green River toward the outer edge of Seattle’s city limits. Moments later he found himself surrounded by death.

As he peered into the clear waters his gaze was met by staring eyes. He saw the body of a young black woman, her face floating just beneath the surface of the water, her body swaying beneath her with the current.

Within the space of six months, six bodies had been discovered in or near the river. The police detectives at the scene quickly realised there was a serial killer on the loose.